In a two-way radio system, each radio typically communicates with one group of radios at a time. For example, a firefighter may be affiliated with a firefighter talk group and a police officer may be affiliated with a police talk group. Under normal circumstances, although the firefighter may not be able to communicate with the police officer because they belong to different groups, with the addition of features such as a scan feature, a receive group list feature and a priority monitoring feature, a radio affiliated with one group may monitor the audio from multiple groups. In addition, when an incident event occurs, multiple radios or groups of radios may be merged or re-grouped into a single common group using a dynamic regrouping feature, a console patching feature, and/or a multi-select feature.
With the dynamic regrouping feature, a system controller or dispatcher may notify radios affiliated with different groups of a new common group so that the radios from different groups can seamlessly communicate with each other via the new common group. The dispatcher remotely redirects individual radios to the common group, without any intervention from the radio operators. With the console patching feature, the dispatcher temporarily reassigns different groups to a single group, called a super group. Radios temporarily reassigned to the super group may then communicate with each other on the super group. The multi-select feature allows the dispatcher to merge several talk groups together on one voice channel to participate in a single conversation. Using the multi-select feature, a console operator can talk to and listen to all of the selected talk groups. However, the members of the individual talk groups cannot talk to or listen to members of other talk groups.
These features all require infrastructure, for example, a console operator or dispatcher, to merge or regroup radios into the super group and/or common group. If the console operator is unavailable, for example, in situations where there is a power interruption, these features will not work. These regrouping procedures also require that the dispatcher send a merge or regroup command and that all the target radios receive the merge or regroup command before starting the call on the super group and/or common group. This has a disadvantageous effect of increasing the time required to set up the call on the super group and/or common group.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved apparatus and method for incorporating multiple talk groups in a single call.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.